Joseph Rose

The first few episodes wind up being fairly fun, and promise an interesting Firefly-but-as-an-anime-type story to come. However, things quickly devolve from there as characters start making insane and out-of-character decisions solely because the plot needs them to, culminating in a finale that makes absolutely no sense, has no setup, and makes everyone act even more out-of-character than before. Maybe if they had a third cour, that could have at least helped with the abruptness of the ending; but even before that the series had a habit of pulling new plot developments out of nowhere, so I doubt it would have made much difference. The story is inconsistent at best, the worldbuilding is lazy (lots of "This is the Northern Nation because they're in the north, do you get it?" level stuff here), and the characters make progressively less rational decisions the longer the series goes on. Eventually, entire story arcs are dropped unceremoniously, making you wonder why they spent upwards of 6 episodes establishing this arc only to forget about it later. And let's not even go into the epilogue, which honestly seemed like they were making it up as they went. Aside from some good music, a few moments of exceptional animation, and a few early moments of pretty decent characterization, there's really not much to recommend here. It's a classic case of a series having no idea where it's going and trying to make up for it by pretending to be deep.